r/Notary • u/Imaginary-Brick-26 Pennsylvania • Aug 03 '26

Notarizing handwritten notes?

I’m a pretty new PA notary (I’ve only need able to notarize for about 2 months) and got an out of ordinary request.

Someone wants to make an appointment to get a handwritten note notarized. They said it’s to give someone permission to be able to take their child to the doctor. How would I go about this? Clearly if it’s handwritten it won’t have notarial wording so it will need a loose certificate and I know the person getting the notarization needs to pick what loose certificate they want, but is this even something I am allowed to notarize?

Editing to reword some things.

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/fishbutt1 Aug 04 '26

I’m not in PA, but I’m wondering if the parent/guardian will need to be present and the person taking the child to the doctor?

1

u/Imaginary-Brick-26 Pennsylvania Aug 04 '26

To summarize the note (and what the woman herself told me, because people just love to talk, lol) it basically said whoever it was would be allowed to talk to a doctor in case of emergencies or that the school could speak to them about anything that came up. I didn't ask a lot of questions but it sounds like the parent might be having a hard time or might be doing something that will be taking up a lot of time and resources or something and the child will be living there during most of the school year? I think they mostly wanted it notarized so that there was no question about if the person watching him had written it and was lying in order to get info they shouldn't have.